Dynamoelectric machines, such as electrical generators, generally may have a stator or armature core with stacked laminations of a magnetic material formed in an annular assembly. An array of axially extending and circumferentially spaced stator core slots may be formed through the radial surface of the stator core. Assembled stator bars with stator windings then may be disposed in these slots. The stator bars may be held in place by a slot support system that may include stator wedges, stator slides, filler strips, and ripple springs. These support components may maintain the stator bars in a radially tight position within the slots. The wedges, slides, filler strips, and ripple springs may impose radial forces on the stator bars and aid in resisting magnetic and electrically induced radial forces.
The stator wedges may be received within axial dovetail slots on opposite sidewalls of the radial slots. During the process of tightening the stator wedges, a stator slide may be installed against each stator wedge. Specifically, reference will be made herein to “stator wedges” that are seated in the dovetail slots and “stator slides” that are used to tighten the wedges. The stator slides may be pre-gauged and pre-sized to have a significant interference fit relative to the stator bars, the fillers, and the ripple springs. The force required to install the various stator components may be significant. Moreover, thousands of the stator wedges and other components typically may be used in a conventional generator such that installation may be a very time intensive and expensive procedure.
Several methods have been used to provide the force required to install the stator components. Each of these methods, however, may have certain drawbacks. For example, a known stator bar jacking tool generally cannot be positioned at the point of wedge insertion but instead required the point of insertion to be at a distance therefrom. Stator slides generally have been manually installed using a drive board and a large hammer or by using a modified pneumatically operated hammer. These methods, however, not only may be time consuming, they also may place considerable strain on the operator. These methods may subject the operator to fatigue, the risk of repetitive motion injury and/or hearing damage, and may pose a risk to the integrity of the stator components. The uniformity and consistency of the tightness of the stator wedge and the stator slide also may be poor using the above-described methods.